Monday, January 11, 2010

Iceberg Fun

Nancy Johnston's Iceberg Play area has been a hit this week at the Scottish Rite Clinic. She froze a couple of bowls of water colored with blue or green food dye each night and then set these Icebergs up in the water table. They lasted all day and entertained many children. With a few polar bears and penguins, the setting was complete. One week, the children spent time squeezing various colors of water (food dye again) into the icebergs with a nasal syringe and making holes in the icebergs. Filling, pouring, squeezing--these activities are very engaging and adding food color to anything is riveting. This week, the kids have been knocking the animals off the icebergs by sliding balls down a piece of rain gutter.

1 comment:

What a great idea. It is so hot in Australia ( 40 degrees).I am thinking this might be a great hot weather activity for us when the children return to school. We will have to freeze our bowls of ice in the freezer though :)

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Why Games? is a discussion about why playing with your child is important and how structured games can make your play times more successful.Creating Common Ground is a discussion of how to get started with children who are not yet talking and often move away, ignore you, or protest when you try to play.

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Playing is like breathing, hugging, prayer--you need to play. Everyone needs to play.Playing is a means of growing attraction between any two souls. You suspect two people are falling in love if they start to play together.If you want a child to love you, learn from you, imitate you, communicate with you, enjoy you--then play with that child. Both of you will experience joy.

It sometimes helps, when one is trying to understand the meaning of a phenomenon , to see that phenomenon in a different context. Watch here as a Husky and a Polar Bear come together in play. Although not as dramatic, I recently saw a rabbit and a squirrel play together in my back yard. Who knew this even happened? Watching them, I felt they provided me with a confirmation, yet again, of the importance of play to the well-being of all beings who are capable of playing. Dr. Stuart Brown Director of the National Institute of Play, speaking in 2007 on Speaking of Faith, describes how play promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life's complications. I see the capacity to communicate and enjoy social interaction grow every day with children who have Autism Spectrum Disorders as they play with family and friends at the clinic where I practice. This blog and the companion web site, Autism Games are dedicated to inspiring you, fellow lover of a child with autism, to play in a thousand different ways and for a thousand different reasons with your child.

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